


Subhuman

by ThatDamnKennedyKid



Category: Devil May Cry
Genre: Alternate Universe - Not Related, Asexual Character, Fix-It of Sorts, Gay Male Character, Lesbian Character, M/M, Pansexual Character, Post-Canon, Soul Bond, True Mates
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-31
Updated: 2019-03-13
Packaged: 2019-11-17 17:00:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18102686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThatDamnKennedyKid/pseuds/ThatDamnKennedyKid
Summary: (Post-DMC 5, plot spoilers)With Vergil and Dante locked away in Hell somewhere, Trish and Lady take over the business of Devil May Cry. Nero drops by every now and then, but it doesn't feel the same. It's like with Dante missing, so is something from him.





	Subhuman

**Author's Note:**

> Since DMC and Bayonetta are confirmed to be in the same universe, I have a nice little fix-it for that pesky "being related" nonsense between Dante and Nero. 
> 
> As the tags say, in this, they are not closely related (like, a thousand years of blood diluting level not close). 
> 
> Also:  
> Dante - Pansexual | Demiromantic  
> Vergil - Asexual | Aromantic  
> Nero - Gay | Panromantic  
> Trish - Lesbian  
> Lady - Lesbian  
> Nico - Lesbian | Demiromantic  
> Kyrie - Straight

"Still nothing?"

"No."

"I'm sorry, Nero. We'll call you if anything happens."

"Thanks, Lady, Trish."

* * *

"I'm having more than a little trouble even imagining a situation where I would have sex." He blocked the blow, but they were just play-fighting right now, getting some light exercise. 

"If you're not his father, then there has to be a reason he can wield Sparda's weapons. And I really can't think of another."

Vergil frowned, lowering his blade and watching Dante to the same, leaning against it. 

"I'm serious, Dante. I can't ever recall having sex, nor desiring to do so."

Dante shrugged, then rubbed his chest with a wince. 

"Your demon bothering you?"

"Yeah." Dante coughs, trying to mask the discomfort.

"What's it want?"

"It's got it in it's head that it found a mate for us." Dante winces again. 

"Is that why you're so invested in confirming that I'm Nero's father?"

"What? No!"

He shrugged. "There's no shame if it is."

"I'm not trying anything." Dante insisted. 

"I don't know why you didn't just do it."

"Huh?"

"It's not like he grew up with you as Uncle Dante."

Dante recoiled, face twisting in disgust. "Augh, Vergil, c'mon. He's my nephew! I'm not having sex with my  _brother's son_."

Vergil shrugged again. 

"Would you still say that if it was a woman? Because Nero can't get pregnant that's supposed to be okay?"

"The effects of inbreeding take more than one generation to show."

Dante pointed his finger at him. "I'm going to do you a favour and unhear that. There is no qualifier that makes incest okay."

"Even if your demon craves it?"

Dante's face was pinched, and he wasn't above enjoying it. "Look, that little bastard can bitch and moan all it wants. I'm more than my demon and I think that's despicable. Not just on me, but to do that to him? What kind of monster would I be?"

He just grinned. "Hey, it's your life."

"How about we get back to the topic at hand, huh?"

"As you wish. I think, since we're here, we can snoop through the remains of Mundus' castle and search. If Sparda had any other children before us, as is likely, Mundus is equally likely to have hunted them down."

"Maybe his trophy room, then? Look for artifacts that reek of Sparda?"

"It's as good a place as any to begin. Even with my memory in disarray, I am nearly certain that I've never . . . done that."

Dante got a soft, gentle look in his eye. "There's some new terminology you should take a look at when we get back. I think you'll find it helpful and enlightening."

"I'll take your word for it. In the meantime, onward."

"God, you're pretentious."

* * *

When Nero walked into Devil May Cry, he'd expected the lights to be off. Morrison had given them a tip, and they weren't supposed to be home yet. He pulled Blue Rose just to be careful and entered, looking around but finding nothing amiss. A box of pizza was on the main desk and looked mostly finished. 

"Your expenses are a mess."

"At least for me, it's just expenses."

"Cheap shot."

"You make it easy."

"Have you any more progress with the Sage apparatus?"

"Yeah, but only marginal. It seems to be responding to my demon blood, but I don't have the magic it's looking for. I can't activate it."

"We were fortunate enough to even happen across a Lumen Sage memory crystal. A forged staff and a mind urn are even more valuable. I dare say we might have even come across the Right Eye if we'd stayed any longer."

"No thanks. This place is a hive of demon energy with all the devil arms already. Don't need angels up our ass too."

"Well, yes. There is that."

"Now what about my money?"

"You keep your records well, if messy. You need to stop giving money away."

"I could. I won't, though."

"You make plenty. I don't see why you can't live within your means and be charitable, if that's what you desire to do."

"Those people need it more than I do."

"I would hazard a guess and say that's not entirely true. If you don't use the money you make to shelter and feed yourself, there's nothing that separates you from the less fortunate."

"Hey, there were some days I desperately wished someone would help me. If I give someone two thousand dollars, that's a motel for a month. Maybe just long enough to get their life together, to start again or get started. If Morrison hadn't felt bad enough for me to give me jobs, I wouldn't have this place."

Nero rounded the corner, confirming Dante sitting on the kitchen counter with some sort of amulet/tablet in his hands and Vergil at the kitchen table with a ledger, pencil and assorted scattered paper with neatly written equations and calculations on them. The rest of the counter had white and gold objects of all kinds on it. 

"Oh hey. It just activated." Dante touched the tablet and began scrolling through the information it projected. "It's a good thing Lumen is so close to Latin. If this was Umbran, I might have been at a disadvantage."

"You? Lacking mental faculty? How novel."

"Let's not bring up each other's world-ending towers, I mean faults."

Vergil snorted in good humour, looking back down at the ledger. 

Nero's demon, until the Qliphoth being a small whisper in the back of his mind, roared to life and he felt almost physically pulled to Dante. The man in question looked down at his chest, winced, then looked over at him. 

"Nero! What are the chances?"

Vergil looked up as well, blinking. "Perhaps that's why the tablet activated."

"So we were right."

"It appears so."

"What the actual fuck?" He finally burst. "How long have you been back? What is all this shit? What are you talking about? How did you get back?"

"To answer in no particular order," Vergil replied, "we used Yamato to leave. These items are Lumen Sage artifacts tinted with Sparda's essence. We were discussing Dante's abhorrent financial situation-"

"Hey!"

"-and the prospect of how, exactly, you are actually related to Sparda."

He collapsed in a chair across from Vergil. "How I'm- what?"

"Only relatives of powerful devils like Sparda can use his weapons' power. Sure, Trish can hold Sparda, but she doesn't gain the extra power from it like I did." Dante explained. "It was no different with Rebellion and Yamato. Yamato reacted and worked for you, granted you access to your devil powers because you're related to Sparda. I figured, because it wasn't me, that it would be Vergil. We decided, since we were already in the underworld, to go and see if Mundus had killed any of Sparda's previous children, should they have existed."

"We found traces of his power in those artifacts there." Vergil gestured to the collection on the counter. "Sparda's first family, one established with a rogue Lumen Sage. Records from the castle and the artifacts' recovery leads us to believe that you are descended from that line, not ours."

"So I'm- I'm one of these Sagelived

"That's the short of it, yes." Vergil confirmed. 

"What's the long of it?"

"Sparda served as regent of Fortuna Island when he first sealed off the Demon world, two thousand years ago." Dante explained, looking unsettling sympathetic. "Fortuna had a small collection of rogue Lumen Sages that lived there. Sparda hooked up with one and they had some kids. The father of the kids was kept secret, and they started breeding with humans again. Five hundred years ago, the Sages got into a war with a rival clan, the Umbra Witches."

"This war resulted in their near-annihilation." Vergil continued, steepling his fingers. "From Mundus' record, we learned that a small family of four retreated to Fortuna with Sparda's help and became ensconced in the Order of Holy Knights there, due to their 'angel' magic. This family began exclusively breeding with humans to hide from both the clans and Mundus, who began to hunt them in earnest. We are led to believe they succeeded. The family tree we found listed a woman named Teressa Lethalen as the last living family member, who had been a prominent Order member."

"She'd only recently returned to duty after a ten-month gap when she exited the city and was later found slain. She was listed as a maternal patient at their hospital. Shortly after, Cecily Kamika submitted adoption paperwork of an 'abandoned male infant', roughly three months old. Teressa was the godmother of Cecily's two children, Credo and Kyrie." Dante finished. "She named the found baby Nero."

Nero didn't even know where to start, didn't know what to say. In the space of a few minutes, the family he thought he had was ripped away, replaced with a different one, then killed off. What the fuck kind of luck did he even have? 

"So, I'm not Vergil's son?"

Vergil shook his head. "I have no memory of such an encounter. That bladed staff there belonged to Teressa, according to Mundus' records. She died roughly five years after Dante and I fought on Temen-ni-gru and I fell into hell. It's not possible for me to be your father."

"And you're sure she's my mom?"

"More sure she's your mother than I was that Vergil was your father." Dante admitted. "That memory crystal there was also hers. She wore it as a necklace and Mundus added it to his collection."

He got up on shaky feet and walked over to the necklace, picking it up and gently running his fingers over the stone. His devil perked up, a sudden rush of power along his fingertips and into the stone. Once the magic ignited, he was back in time, watching the world through the eyes of a woman he'd never meet. 

_"Nero." She panted as she ran, looking back at the approaching demon horde and the maniacal laughter of the hunter demon chasing her. "When they find my body, I hope you'll get this message. I'm sorry. I tried to hide you, shield us from this. I wasn't good enough. I'm so sorry for leaving you behind, baby. So sorry."_

_She jumped over some logs and dashed out across the open water, magical sigils appearing at her feet to keep her above board._

_"You have to listen and understand. The devil inside you, the little voice you can hear, will help you understand the powers I can no longer teach you. Listen to it and accept it. It will help you control your powers and use them for you when you don't know how. Be safe, be kind and be careful. I will love you forever."_

_"There you are, woman." The hunter demon appeared from the water. "And what is that shiny bauble?"_

_She covered the stone with her hand and the image went dark, but the familiar sound of a blade rending flesh didn't need a visual._

He almost dropped it when the vision ended, shaking hard. Dante was at his side - no clue when he got there - and was holding him upright. His devil erupted into elated purrs at the elder's touch. 

"Only Sages can access that stone." Vergil commented distantly. "And you obviously can. We were right."

"Just breathe, take it easy. You can faint if you need to." Dante assured, wrapping him up in his arms. 

"Not gonna . . . be more dead weight." He managed, gritting his teeth and trying to push back the dizziness.

"You're not. You've never been." Dante helped him sit down, kneeling between his legs. 

Vergil cast him a knowing and judgemental look over Nero's slumped shoulder. 

 _Kiss him._ Vergil mouthed. 

Dante backed off, focusing on Nero. "Stay over. We'll explore the Sage toys later."

"Okay." He leaned into Dante and let the elder carry him up the stairs. He didn't consider that he was collapsing into Dante's bed, nor the expression on the older man's face as he stood over him. 


End file.
